Past Distinguished Fellows

Inaugural Class of Distinguished Fellows Program 2014-2016

Park Dietz, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.

President, Park Dietz & Associates Inc.

Biography:

Dr. Dietz founded Park Dietz & Associates, a forensic consulting firm, and Threat Assessment Group, the world’s first workplace violence prevention company. In 2009, Dr. Dietz was named one of the “Top 25 Most Influential People in the Security Industry” by Security magazine. In 2010, he was awarded the “Seymour Pollack Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education in Forensic Psychiatry” by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. In 2014, Biography.com listed Dr. Dietz among the 10 most famous psychiatrists in history.

Dr. Dietz has testified and/or consulted in all 50 states, participating in such notable cases as those involving the assassination attempts on President Reagan and on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Jeffrey Dahmer and more than 25 other serial killers, the Unabomber, the DC sniper cases, the school shootings at Columbine, and civil suits against churches, schools, and youth-serving organizations for the sexual abuse of children.

Educated at Cornell and Johns Hopkins, Dr. Dietz simultaneously earned an M.D., a master’s degree in public health, and a Ph.D. in sociology. He was a psychiatry resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Chief Fellow in Forensic Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and as Professor of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry and Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. He is currently Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine.

Dr. Dietz is a Past President of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Trauma Research and the U.S. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography. He has served as a forensic psychiatrist for both the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and the New York State Police Forensic Sciences Unit. He has authored more than 100 publications on sex offenders, mentally disordered offenders, violent criminals, and forensic psychiatry. He directed a five-year study for the National Institute of Justice on mentally disordered offenders who threaten and stalk public figures and headed a two-year privately funded study of risks to the children and families of executives and other public figures.

Hon. Maria D. Hernandez

Juvenile Court Presiding Judge, Superior Court of Orange County

Biography:

The Honorable Judge Maria Hernandez was appointed Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Court for Orange County on January 1, 2014. Prior to her appointment she was responsible for both dependency and delinquency inventories, presided over Juvenile Drug Court, Dependency Drug Court and the Boys Court program, and chaired the task force relating to Commercially Sexually Exploited Children (CSEC). Currently, Judge Hernandez also serves as a member of Chief Justice Cantil-Sakauye’s “Keeping Kids in School and Out of Court Initiative”, the Judicial Council of California’s “Advisory Committee on Providing Access and Fairness” and serves as faculty for the Judicial Council of California’s Center for Judiciary Education and Research (CJER). Judge Hernandez worked as a senior deputy public defender for the County of Orange as a trial lawyer until she was appointed to the bench as a Commissioner in 2006, and appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger as a judge in 2009. Since 2011, she has served as adjunct Professor of Juvenile and Domestic Law at Western State College of Law. Judge Hernandez is a University of California, Irvine alumni, having graduated with her undergraduate degree from UC Irvine in 1986 and law degree from Western State University-Fullerton in 1991. Before receiving her law degree, Judge Hernandez was a police dispatcher, accident investigator, and public safety officer with the City of Santa Ana Police Department and University of California, Irvine Police Department. Judge Hernandez enjoys maintaining a small inventory of cases while working with juvenile justice partners in the daily administration of juvenile court.

Sandra Hutchens

Orange County Sheriff

Biography:

Sandra Hutchens is the 12th Orange County Sheriff and the first woman to serve as the county’s top cop. She was named Sheriff by the Board of Supervisors in 2008 after a nationwide search which included a field of 48 candidates.

A Southern California native, Sheriff Hutchens was raised in Long Beach, where she graduated from Woodrow Wilson High. Shortly after graduating from high school she was hired as a secretary for the Los Angeles Sheriff ’s Department, where she met some Deputies who convinced her to apply for a Deputy position. She graduated from the Academy in 1978. Her 30 year career includes counterterrorism training in Israel, FBI National Academy training, participation in the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative Program at Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Administration from the University of La Verne.

Sheriff Hutchens has made numerous changes to the Orange County Sheriff ’s Department with the goal of restoring honor to the department. New leadership staff has been added and policies have been revised all with a commitment to the department’s core values: “Integrity without compromise; Service above self; Professionalism in the performance of duty; Vigilance in safeguarding our community.”

Jennifer L. Keller, J.D.

Business Trial Lawyer and Partner, Keller Rackauckas LLP

Biography:

Formerly a top criminal defense lawyer, Jennifer L. Keller made a transition during the past 15 years to business litigation. She has won all of her civil trials, including the widely-followed 2011 retrial of Mattel v. MGA, aka “Barbie v. Bratz.” Keller came on board as lead counsel two weeks before the four-month retrial began in the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana and won a $309M judgment for MGA. The Los Angeles Times called it “a stunning reversal of litigation fortune.” In an unrelated 2009 case Keller won a $350 million jury verdict. In between those two civil trials she gained an acquittal for a client facing a life sentence in a so-called “shaken baby case.” Jennifer won a California Lawyer Magazine CLAY Award (California Attorneys of the Year) for litigation in 2012. She is listed in “The Best Lawyers In America;” Lawdragon’s “500 Leading Lawyers in America;” has been chosen repeatedly for the L.A. & San Francisco Daily Journals’ “Top 100 Lawyers in California;” and is routinely selected by Los Angeles Magazine’s Super Lawyers as one of the Top 50 lawyers in Orange County and Top 50 Women Lawyers in Southern California. The Orange County Trial Lawyers named her as both its Business Litigation Attorney of the Year (2010) and Criminal Defense Attorney of the Year (2000). She is a former President of the Orange County Bar Association. Currently she is co-counsel with John Keker and Elliot Peters in the defense of Standard & Poors, in United States v. The McGraw-Hill Companies; has just filed the state court reprise of the trade-secret portion of MGA v. Mattel, for which she will again be lead counsel; and is preparing to retry (also as lead counsel) a billion-dollar real estate dispute tried the first time by Bingham McCutcheon. Jennifer is a Trustee of Chapman University and the UC Hastings Foundation, and serves on the Regional Board of the Anti-Defamation League of Orange County and Long Beach. A founding fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, she is a past winner of the State Bar President’s Wiley Manuel Award for Pro Bono Service. Jennifer also served as an attorney representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Council. Jennifer graduated from UC Berkeley and UC Hastings. Her nine-attorney firm Keller Rackauckas LLP is among the premier white-collar and complex litigation boutiques in Southern California.